Faith Works 7-4-2025
Jeff Gill
If you're pursuing happiness, it might be in Micah
___
There's a key line of the Declaration of Independence, whose passage by we mark on the Glorious Fourth of July, now 249 years later: how the people of these United States "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Thomas Jefferson was going for a more poetic phrase with "the pursuit of Happiness," when many if not most of his initial readers would have known the triad of "Life, Liberty and…" was phrased differently in John Locke's influential writings, filtered through the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property."
Clank, goes the phrase. That word! Property? It's like Lucy telling Santa Claus what she wants for Christmas was "real estate." Happiness is much more inspiring, and surely more universal a human impulse?
Jefferson was very much in keeping with Montesquieu, though, in seeing a rational shift from "property" to "happiness." They saw in Locke's seminal treatises a case being made for the chief work of government to be the protection of basic rights, starting with the right to life — so even a monarch could not justly take a life merely on a whim — which points toward the right to liberty, which gives rise to "habeas corpus" rights we trace back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D. (which is now honored in the chief courtroom of the Licking County Courthouse) and beyond, to restrictions placed on the king in 1166, limiting a ruler's ability to imprison their subjects.
So a right to life, sure; a right to freedom, unless with specific reasons why they should lose it, of course. But a right to pursue owning property?
It's a logical next step, though. If even the rights of kings are limited as to taking life away, or taking freedoms away, then there is surely some kind of right for a subject, or citizen, to own what is theirs without fear of the nobility just riding in and taking it. In fact, say Locke and Montesquieu and Jefferson, there is an affirmative obligation on the part of a just government, of whatever sort, to protect property rights, so that a worker can enjoy the fruits of their labors.
George Washington most loved quoting a particular verse of the Bible: Micah 4:4. He refers to it in one form or another some fifty times in his personal correspondence: "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."
"None shall make them afraid." Washington, too, saw the role of government as being the bulwark, the shield against misuse and abuse of authority or opportunism to prevent people from the simple enjoyment of their property. Why else have laws and government? So that a person who simply has a grapevine on a hillside and a fig tree near their front door has no need to fear that their efforts can be stolen or appropriated without due cause.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of… a life that is free from the impositions of the powerful, in which you can enjoy the fruits of your labors. King George III was too loose and indifferent about how his government took away property or liberty or even lives, and so the Founders on July 4, 1776 declared that such an unjust government was no government at all.
They declared their independence from it, and set before themselves a challenge to do better, to be a government which respects the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of… happiness, in the most basic of forms, the kind of happiness we have to earn, but which should never be taken away from us.
That is what we continue to pursue.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking up a few of Washington's usages of Micah 4:4. Tell him your favorite verses at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
If you're pursuing happiness, it might be in Micah
___
There's a key line of the Declaration of Independence, whose passage by we mark on the Glorious Fourth of July, now 249 years later: how the people of these United States "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Thomas Jefferson was going for a more poetic phrase with "the pursuit of Happiness," when many if not most of his initial readers would have known the triad of "Life, Liberty and…" was phrased differently in John Locke's influential writings, filtered through the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property."
Clank, goes the phrase. That word! Property? It's like Lucy telling Santa Claus what she wants for Christmas was "real estate." Happiness is much more inspiring, and surely more universal a human impulse?
Jefferson was very much in keeping with Montesquieu, though, in seeing a rational shift from "property" to "happiness." They saw in Locke's seminal treatises a case being made for the chief work of government to be the protection of basic rights, starting with the right to life — so even a monarch could not justly take a life merely on a whim — which points toward the right to liberty, which gives rise to "habeas corpus" rights we trace back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D. (which is now honored in the chief courtroom of the Licking County Courthouse) and beyond, to restrictions placed on the king in 1166, limiting a ruler's ability to imprison their subjects.
So a right to life, sure; a right to freedom, unless with specific reasons why they should lose it, of course. But a right to pursue owning property?
It's a logical next step, though. If even the rights of kings are limited as to taking life away, or taking freedoms away, then there is surely some kind of right for a subject, or citizen, to own what is theirs without fear of the nobility just riding in and taking it. In fact, say Locke and Montesquieu and Jefferson, there is an affirmative obligation on the part of a just government, of whatever sort, to protect property rights, so that a worker can enjoy the fruits of their labors.
George Washington most loved quoting a particular verse of the Bible: Micah 4:4. He refers to it in one form or another some fifty times in his personal correspondence: "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."
"None shall make them afraid." Washington, too, saw the role of government as being the bulwark, the shield against misuse and abuse of authority or opportunism to prevent people from the simple enjoyment of their property. Why else have laws and government? So that a person who simply has a grapevine on a hillside and a fig tree near their front door has no need to fear that their efforts can be stolen or appropriated without due cause.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of… a life that is free from the impositions of the powerful, in which you can enjoy the fruits of your labors. King George III was too loose and indifferent about how his government took away property or liberty or even lives, and so the Founders on July 4, 1776 declared that such an unjust government was no government at all.
They declared their independence from it, and set before themselves a challenge to do better, to be a government which respects the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of… happiness, in the most basic of forms, the kind of happiness we have to earn, but which should never be taken away from us.
That is what we continue to pursue.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking up a few of Washington's usages of Micah 4:4. Tell him your favorite verses at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
